Taiwan Indicts Chinese Billionaire for Alleged Illegal Business Activity

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TAIPEI, Taiwan—The New Taipei District Prosecutors Office has charged a Chinese businesswoman and three others for allegedly running a company in Taiwan illegally.

Prosecutors announced the indictment in a statement on Sept. 25, with some portions redacted, including the full names of the Chinese businesswoman and her company. However, the defendant was identified by local media outlets, including Taiwan’s government-run Central News Agency, as Wang Lai-chun, CEO and chairwoman of China’s Luxshare Precision Industry Co.

In 2018, Wang, a well-known billionaire in China, allegedly used a Hong Kong-based subsidiary to acquire a camera module business from Lite-On Technology, which is a Taiwan-based company that provides optoelectronic components and power management modules, prosecutors said.

Also in 2018, Wang attempted to register the Hong Kong subsidiary as an overseas Chinese-invested company, prosecutors said. Still, the deal was rejected by the Department of Investment Review of the Ministry of Economic Affairs due to the involvement of Chinese capital.

After the failed attempt, Wang allegedly directed codefendant Wu, a male former employee of Lite-On Technology, to establish a Taiwan-based company using the assets of the camera module business in June 2018.

In 2021, Wang allegedly changed the name of the Taiwan-based company and replaced its leadership with two other codefendants: a male surnamed Zhang and a female surnamed Wu, both former employees of Lite-On Technology.

The Taiwan-based company allegedly hired engineers in various fields, including software, hardware, electronics, and optoelectronics, through Taiwan-based job bank websites, according to prosecutors. Their research was subsequently transferred to a company affiliated with Luxshare Precision Industry in Guangzhou, southern China.

Prosecutors stated that from 2018 to 2023, Wang allegedly transferred about $65.57 million through affiliates to the Taiwan-based company to cover its operational expenses and employee salaries.

The four defendants were accused of violating Taiwan’s Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area, which bans profit-seeking Chinese companies from conducting operations in Taiwan without proper authorization from the Taiwanese authorities.

The District Prosecutors Office said it had issued a warrant for Wang.

“The high-tech sector remains the backbone of our national economy,“ prosecutors said. ”In recent years, there have been many mainland Chinese companies establishing domestic operations [in Taiwan] under the guise of overseas investment or other means. Effective measures must be taken to prevent the outflow of talent and technology from our high-tech industry.”

The District Prosecutors Office said local high-tech industrial companies and talented workers must “avoid falling into traps set up by mainland Chinese companies and participate in illegal operations.”

“This agency will also actively work to uncover and investigate such cases in the future to safeguard the competitiveness of domestic industries,” it added.

The Epoch Times was unable to obtain contact information for the lawyers of any of the four defendants.

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